Normal's Boring
by gleeme33
Summary: Hollywood Arts is not just a school for the talented, it's a school for the gifted. That is, a school for vampires, werewolves, mermaids, wizards, fairies, and everyone in between. Jori, with possible Bat or Cabbie.
1. Prolog

_Normal's Boring_

_Prolog_

"Jade, _no_!"

Beck's scream echoed across the graveyard. The full moon shone on his bare back and the dark-haired boy's brown eyes squinted into golden, pupil-less ones. He let out an inhuman shriek, and hurled himself from his two feet, meeting the ground on silver, moon-colored paws. His dark jeans had been ripped to patches in the change, and left behind him, discarded on the dew-covered grass. The wolf howled a warning and ran across the graveyard, running as fast as four legs could move the creature. He howled again before he came across the opening that Jade had found recently – the opening that led to the catacomb. The moon-colored wolf jumped, without realizing that his new weight and bulk of his vertebrae would not allow him to land so gracefully as he would in human form. He landed on the stone-like, cold ground with a thump and a slight whimper; he composed himself for a moment and soon he was human again. Naked, sweaty, and newly bruised, Beck took a deep breath and got back to his feet.

"Jade!" He called again, going deeper and deeper into the old tomb. He feared he was too late, and his nose told him that he was.

"_Jade_! You shouldn't be here! This needs to end!" His only answer was a whine, half made of satisfaction, half made of pain.

"_Jade_!" Beck yelled for the final time, running into one of the deeper caverns. There was the girl in question – Jade – her entire body covered by her signature, flowing black cloak. It always looked more like a cape to Beck, with one tie across her neckline and the rest of it draping across her pale body, but no – Jade insisted that her favorite piece of clothing was indeed a _cloak_. It sounded much better, she had said, and '_cape_' would make her seem like some sort of superhero.

Which, of course, she is _not_.

She turned around upon hearing the boy's footsteps, her rose-colored lips dripping with human blood. The red substance dripped from her mouth and down her chin, and Beck cringed.

"Whip your mouth, at least," he told her, and Jade did just that with the side of her cloak.

"What happened to clothes, Beck?" She asked.

"I…lost it. I lost control back there," he motioned up to the hole where sunlight broke through to the underground catacombs. "Because you need to _stop _this, Jade! You need to _stop_!" She glared at him, her eyes still glowing red, and gnarled:

"Would you rather I fall dead? It's either me or them, Beck, and I choose _me_."

"They're innocent people, Jade!" He grabbed her by the shoulders. "And it's _monsters _like you that are the reason why we – "

" – _Monsters _like _me_?" She interrupted him. "Like _me_! _You're _the one who couldn't control his anger, _you're _the one standing here naked!"

"_You're _the one with the mouth covered in_ blood_!"

Jade almost flinched – _almost_.

"Leave me alone," she whispered, and slowly walked towards the glimmer of sunlight ahead of them.

Beck sighed, and wondered if she would ever see reason. _No_, he told himself. _Probably not_. Two weeks ago, it was a girl that was in Sikowitz's class with them. Last week, it was a girl who worked at Nozu. Tonight, it was a freshman girl at Hollywood Arts, a girl who was impressed that an upperclassmen was even talking to her, let alone 'showing her someplace cool', and then kissing her, and then…

Beck cringed again, not wanted to think about how Jade did what she did. It disgusted him, the killing part. He was only here to clean up her mess. Beck walked slowly towards the girl's spent body, which was now just as pale as Jade was, with fierce bite marks on her neck, wrists, torso and legs. Little traces of blood were left behind on her face and surrounding the bite marks, but for the most part, Jade had sucked this girl clean. Beck sighed again. It was always the same type of girl with Jade – brown hair, brown eyes, toned body, pretty face.

It was always a girl that looked like Tori Vega.


	2. Chapter One

_Normal's Boring_

_Chapter One_

"Trin-_aaaaaaaaa_!" Tori yowled up the stairs to her older sister. "Come on, we're gonna be late for school! I've got a presentation for Sikowitz's class first period, and I _can't _be late!" Her sister Trina came running down the stairs, with a sparkling, off-white wand in her hands, as if she were trying to hide it in her clutches.

"Don't rush me, Tori!" The older Vega girl snapped as she continued down the stairs, and slipped a pair of shoes on her feet.

"Why do you have that?" Tori asked, gesturing to the wand in Trina's hands.

"Have what?"

"That wand."

"Oh," Trina started as if it were no big deal. She then continued a moment later, after a short pause, with: "A fairy in my study hall let me borrow it, that's all. No big deal."

"Yeah…" Tori continued as she opened the door. "But why do you _have _it?"

"I…I thought maybe…if I worked at it…" Trina struggled to finish her sentence, but remained seemingly poised as she grabbed her car keys. "I tried to make it work and it didn't, okay?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Tori stopped her sister dead in her tracks. "You tried to make a fairy's wand work for you? Trina, are you insane? That's dangerous!"

"Whatever," Trina remarked as they started the drive to school.

"You know we don't have to be gifted to go to Hollywood Arts," the younger Vega reminded her sister. "We just have to be _talented_. There just so happens to be lots of gifted kids who – "

" – _Whatever_," Trina repeated, ending the conversation.

Tori slumped in the passenger seat of her sister's car. Sometimes, she wished she was gifted, like most of her friends, not mortal and normal and _boring_ like she was. Maybe she was better at hiding it than her sister, but Tori wished, from time to time, that she could shape-shift into any animal like Andre, become a wolf in the full moon like Beck, cast spells and enchant items like Robbie, have her legs replaced with a beautiful tail once exposed to water like Cat…

"No, no, _no_…" Tori murmured to herself, as she leap out of Trina's car, and sprinted towards Hollywood Arts. "Don't ring – _don't ring_!" But her words and running were both, by now, fruitless; the bell rung, and Tori stopped dead in her tracks for a moment. She was late for her presentation in Sikowitz's class already, and it was all Trina's fault. _Stupid Trina!_ She thought, in anger. _She's always late for everything, and now I'm going to have to pay the price! _The younger Vega sister continued towards the school, walking into the building with shuffled feet. As she glumly made her way towards the classroom, she noticed that she was not alone in the halls after all.

"Jade?"

Jade whipped around to see, to her surprise, Tori Vega standing before her. The vampire had been pacing the halls, once everyone else was in class, trying to get this very girl out of her head. Tori looked her over – Jade was dressed in black, per usual, but this particular outfit was much different than any Tori had seen her in before. It was a short, strapless, black dress, which accentuated her chest, with almost thigh-high, lacy boots. Tied with one single bow across her neckline, she also wore some sort of cape, which draped down the pale girl's figure nicely. To Tori, she looked tired, as if she hadn't slept in days – then again, Tori wasn't sure if vampires even _slept _at all…was that just fiction, or truth? – When she turned around to see the other girl, Jade took a long, needing gulp from the flask-like thermos in her hand.

"What do you want?" She demanded roughly.

"Nothing," Tori recoiled. "But…are you okay?"

"_Okay_?"

"Yeah…I – I mean, is everything…alright?"

"_Alright_?" Realizing this was getting her nowhere, Jade added with a sigh: "Yeah. Yeah Vega, everything's perfectly _alright_. Don't you have to get to class?"

"Don't _you_?" Tori crossed her arms.

"Is that any of your business? Sikowitz gave a pass. I don't think _you _have one, do you?"

"Uh…no, I – "

"Well then you'd better _move it_, Vega."

Neither girl said anything more. Tori went to class, and as soon as she was out of sight, Jade ran to the nearest open window, and slipped out of the building. She had to run, she had to fight something, she had bite someone. She couldn't take it anymore. What was it about Tori Vega? What _was _it about Tori Vega? Once she was far enough away from the school and everyone in it, Jade jumped from branch to branch up a tall tree until she had made it to the top. She rested her head in her knees and tried to somehow compose her thoughts. When Tori Vega came around, it was like her nerve endings suddenly became lit on fire. She wanted to bite her, to tie her up and torture her, to kill her slowly…but at the same time, she wanted to be with her, to…find someone to _love _in her…

"But who could ever love a _monster _like me?" Jade said aloud. A squirrel, which had been scaling the tree for some time now, finally reached Jade's branch. It starred at her with it's beady, little eyes, and the vampire sighed yet again. "Hello, Andre," she said. "Skipping class again?" In place of the squirrel now, was Andre Harris.

"I could ask you the same thing," he said. "Tori's gonna hate me for it, but we had a presentation together for Sikowitz today, and I – "

"Oh, my _God_!" Jade seethed. "_Enough _about _Tori Vega_! If I hear one more word about _Tori Vega_, I swear, I'll – "

"Whoa, Jade," Andre tried to calm her. "Chill out, will you! What's the matter?"

"_Nothing_!" The vampire yowled. "_Nothing's _the matter! Why does everyone thing something's wrong with me today? I'm _fine_!"

"Jadelyn Angeline West, I've known you since we were both in kindergarten, and you are clearly _not _fine."

"You know what? Enjoy the tree!" With that, Jade pushed herself back down to the ground, and kept on running.


	3. Chapter Two

_Normal's Boring_

_Chapter Two_

Jade figured she should go home.

She ran for hours and hours – the duration of the school day – through the dark, tree covered forests that homeless vampires inhabited. These vampires, called 'rouge' vampires, had no rules, no restrictions, and no _principles_ for that matter. A normal vampire home would teach the same principles regarding their diet just the way a mortal home would – don't play with your food, clean up after yourself, whip your face, don't talk with your mouth full, don't eat off of someone else's plate unless they tell you otherwise, things like that. Rouges didn't care about moral things like that at all – if they saw your prey, they'd steal it. They'd leave the bodies of their victims lying around the forest floor, like leftovers that no one cared to put away. They'd torture their prey once they knew what was happening to them – killing them slowly, sharing with them every detail of just how they would rid them of their blood and internal organs. But worst of all, rouges had no place to call home – they scourged the forests and other areas that vampires called home, and gave the rest of them a bad name. Not all vampires were degusting, ruthless, monstrous creatures that viewed human murder as a sport – some of them, like Jade, only drank blood to survive.

Luckily for Jade, she wasn't like them – in fact, not only did she have _a _home, she had _two_. She had one home with her mother, and one with her father and his new wife. Her mother, Elizabeth, was a mortal; a human. The only physical characteristic she had in common with her daughter was her blue-ish-green eye color – her mother was blonde, and had skin that always seemed to have a naturally tan glow to it. Her face was beautiful, for a human, and she was the parent who Jade lived with primarily. Her mother worked at a children's hospital in the area, and she was kind, loving, and very smart. Her other home – the one of which she did not favor – was with her father, Charles West, and his new wife. Her father was a vampire, and a nasty one at that – he felt nothing, Jade realized at some point in her youth, whenever he made a kill. He taught Jade all of the dark things that linger inside her – he taught her, by example, anger, hatred, jealously, rudeness, meanness, and cruelty. His new wife is not her favorite person either – she only married her father for his power and his money.

Even though Jade would _never _tell anyone – the only one who knows is Beck, because of their time growing up together – she truly was half _human_. Although she'd never show it, she _felt _it every time she made a kill. She felt guilt, and she felt like a_ monster_. Most of the time, Jade's need for survival would kick in during a hunt and kill – the feelings only came afterward. Lately, however, she could only see one thing as she bit into human flesh, and gulped their sweet, red blood. She could only see herself as a monster – a _murder _– and could only thing of how she was ridding the world of a perfectly good human.

Tori Vega – _she _was a perfectly good human, and lately, Jade could only think of two options: killing her, or loving her.

Here is where her dilemma laid – which home should she go to at a time like this? Her father could, perhaps, help her shake whatever it was that was effecting her – but he'd meet it with brutality, and Jade wasn't sure she wanted that right now. She could go to her mother…but would she understand? Jade always felt bad for her mother when she dealt with vampire problems – the nights Jade would sneak through her bedroom window after hunting, she knew her mother stayed up, secretly waiting for her daughter to return home. She knew how her mother felt when all of the other young girls Jade grew up with were getting their periods for the first time, and bonding with their mothers, while that would never happen for Jade. She knew how her mother felt about never having grandchildren. She knew how her mother felt about Jade's eating habits – when she'd see a headline in the paper about some bloody, random murder and look at her daughter with big eyes, hoping and praying that she had nothing to do with it. The last thing Jade wanted to do was pile more problems that her mother couldn't understand onto her…but right now, she had no other choice.

"Mom…?" Jade murmured when she slipped through the door of her mother's house. "Mom? I need you!" And her mother, happy to be needed, scrambled to her daughter's sight.

"Oh, Jade, honey – what is it?" The woman asked, bringing her daughter to their small living room, sitting next to her on their small couch. Jade knew this is what she was hoping for – a real mother-daughter moment – and it made her sad to crush it vampire-related topics once more. "You can tell me anything!"

"You're not going to like it…" Jade murmured, and took a small sip from the thermos she'd been carrying.

"You can tell me _anything_," her mother repeated, now wide-eyed and anticipating the worst.

"Well…it's just…" she drew a long, snaking breath. "I…I have to kill, Mom. To live, I have to kill. You know that already. But recently…recently…" she breathed again, even though she really didn't need to. Oxygen did nothing for her expect buy her time. "I've been having trouble doing that. See this?" She showed her mother the flask-like thermos in her hand. "Sometimes, when I'm really lucky and have extra…_stuff_, I can save it in here, for when I'm sick or just too tired to get more stuff for myself. Recently, this is all I've been drinking out of…"

"Jade," her mother whimpered. "Just tell me what you need to tell me."

"Okay," she said, and simply stated: "I can't kill the way I used to. I don't know why, I just can't." Elizabeth nodded as she took in what her daughter was saying.

"Alright," she finally said in a small voice. "Well…I work with a lot of injured athletes at the hospital. A lot of times, they'll say after a surgery or physical therapy, they'll have a hard time getting back in the game – they'll be stuck in a slump. Maybe that's all it is. Maybe you're just stuck in a slump."

"Yeah…" Jade took this into consideration. Could that be all it really was – a simple slump? "Maybe." And she looked up at her mother, who was smiling, happy to be needed. A pain of a new emotion washed over the vampire. She wanted that, too...

She wanted to be needed.


	4. Chapter Three

_Normal's Boring_

_Chapter Three_

"Jade! _Jade_!"

The girl in question, who had fallen asleep early that night, woke up to see her little brother, Max, in a panic.

"Maxie…" she groaned and sat up in bed. "Wh-what's wrong?"

"You fell asleep!" He yelled in a child's terror. "You didn't make sure there's no monsters in my closet!"

"Oh, Maxie…" she hugged him slightly and brushed his warm cheek with her cold hand. "There are _no_ monsters. There are _never_ any monsters. I promise."

"But you didn't check!" His blue-green eyes tangoed with tears. "And I saw some monsters when I was walking home from school today. How do you know there's not one hiding in there? _Please_, Jade!"

"Well, alright, fine," she sighed, and slowly got out of bed.

Max, her seven-year-old brother, was completely human – the son of her mother and the man she was with after Jade's father and she divorced. Once he found out that Elizabeth was pregnant with Max, he didn't stick around. He was from London originally, and came up with some excuse that Jade didn't remember as to why he had to 'suddenly go back' – he never called, emailed, or even texted again after that. He never even saw Max, and for that, Jade would always resent him. Her brother was a beautiful boy, with soft blonde curls like her mother, and the same eye color of which the three of them shared. Maybe seven was a little on the old side for thinking there could be monsters in the closet – but Jade didn't care. She wanted to be his protector from whatever monsters came his way, real or not. She wanted to be everything for him that she possibly could.

Once they reached her brother's bedroom, Jade turned to him and said:

"Okay now, Max. Where do you want me to check for monsters?"

"In th-the closet," he told his big sister, fear-stricken upon entering the room where monsters could be hiding. "A-and under the b-bed."

"Alright," she said. "Now, I want you to stay behind me, okay? I'm going to show you that there's no way that there are any monsters hiding in your room."

"O-okay," he responded, and quickly grabbed Jade's hand. She nearly jumped from the warmth of her brother's touch. "Your hands are cold!" He remarked at her icy body temperature. Inside of pulling away, like Jade expected him to, he simply giggled, forgetting for a moment his fear. _If he only knew_ _just how flipped this, _Jade thought to herself. _I don't take away fear – I _cause _it…_

"Jade!" He yowled, tugging her toward his closet.

"Oh – monsters – right."

Jade swung open Max's closet door with her free hand, while her brother, behind her, flinched and expected something to jump out and yell '_boo!_'.

"See?" His sister prompted. "Nothing. There's nothing in there." Max breathed a sigh of relief.

"Now under the bed!"

"Okay, under the bed," Jade walked over to her brother's bed and got down on all fours, peeking her head underneath it. "Nope. Nothing here either."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Maxie, I'm sure," she told him, getting back to her feet. "There's nothing there. There never is. You're safe with me, okay?"

"Okay," he said softly, and hugged his sister tightly. "I love you, Jade."

"I love you, too."

Since going back to sleep was now a futile effort, and she didn't want to worry her mother by going out into the forest tonight, Jade decided to take a shower. Showers always calmed her – feeling the hot water on her cold skin, washing her dark hair under it, as if washing away her troubles, was a feeling that was always there for her. Once in her bathroom with the door closed, Jade began to undress, in that moment realizing that she was still in one of the outfits she wore when she planned on hunting – it was easier to lure prey in, and easier for her to know that they would let their guards down.

She examined herself in bathroom mirror – her dark hair, which was long enough to cascade past her shoulders, but didn't quite reach her breasts – was the exact contrast of her skin tone, an almost ghastly pale. Off went her cloak, and her dress, and then the vampire girl stood there in only her black bra and panties. She looked herself over once more. Jade had ample breasts ever since junior high – all female vampires did, they were looked at as something to help with luring in prey. That's what Jade had been taught, anyway…but now, looking at her mature body in the mirror, she thought that her body had to be more than a hunting tool. She unhooked her bra and slipped off her panties. Jade took a breath and ran her cold hands over her breasts, and it sent a small shiver through her body. This was good, she thought. This is similar to what it felt like when she was stalking her prey – the small, meek start of something so, sensationally _good_…

Jade coughed. In another second, she threw herself to her knees by her bathroom's toilet, and started throwing up blood. This went on, non-stop, for approximately ten minutes, and once she was able to move without getting sick, Jade quickly threw her clothes back on, and tried to run down to her mother – however, she didn't even make it out of the bathroom before needing to throw up yet again.

"M-Mom!" She called as soon as she could. "_Mom_!" Her mother came running and found her daughter this horrible scene – she had never felt so powerless. In an instant, she knew there was nothing she could do for Jade but hold her hair back and tell her that everything would be okay. Honestly, she had no idea if everything would be okay, or if it wouldn't be…

Jade didn't sleep that night – she spent the hours of which she should have used for sleep leaning over the toilet, puking up the little blood that she still had in her system. By morning, she was lying on the couch, listening to her mother pace back and forth while she spoke to her father on the phone.

"Yes, Charles," her mother was saying. "Is there anyone I can take her to? A doctor, a consultant? Someone who can help her?" Her father must have answered, because after a while, Elizabeth added: "Alright, I'll take her today."

As soon as Jade was up to it, they got in the car and drove for nearly two hours in silence – neither of them knew what to say. Dr. Grayson looked a lot like an older version of Jade, with the same dark hair and pale skin.

"Ah – yes, hello. Please come in, Mrs. West. You too, Jade," said the doctor when they knocked. Once they were seated and settled, she started again: "From what you said on the phone, Mrs. West, it seems like Jade has a sort of sickness that is rather common among half-vampire-half-humans. There's no specific name for it, since the half-vampire-half-human community is so small, but I've seen it all before – I've even had it myself."

"You…you have?" Jade asked.

"Yes, and you'll be fine," Dr. Grayson added with a small smile. "It's a simple effect of your hormones at this time in your life. I assume you haven't gotten your menstrual period, correct?"

"Uh, yeah," Jade answered. "That's right."

"Right. This sudden sickness, it's a simple effect of your human hormones growing and changing – your body is rejecting blood because the human chemicals in your body are going through a sort of growth spurt. Have you tried eating or drinking before?"

"When I was younger," she responded. "I threw up for the rest of the day."

"That's because the vampire makeup of your body was completely dominate – and it still is – but at this point in your life, you're going through some large emotional growth, and the human makeup is taking over for a little while. My advice," the doctor continued: "is to eat and drink and sleep like a human would. No blood, no going on at all hours of the night. Do that, and you'll be perfectly fine in a week, two weeks tops. Mrs. West," she faced Jade's mother. "Can I speak to Jade alone for a moment?"

"Oh…um, sure," Jade's mother responded, and stepped out of the office.

"Jade, I have to ask you," Dr. Grayson said. "Are you sexually active?"

"Uh…no," Jade sighed. She'd teased her victims before, as a way of making them let their guard down, but she'd never gone far enough with anyone to deem herself 'sexually active'. "No, I'm not."

"It's just that, with your hormones spiking so randomly, I thought there could be a sudden change like that in your emotional life."

"What happens if there is?"

"Nothing, once you get better. If you get this sickness once, you'll never get it again."

"Well, that's good," Jade said, and got up to leave. "Thank you, Dr. Grayson." The doctor then slid a piece of paper Jade's way – written on it was a phone number.

"Call me if you ever think you need me."

"Thank you…I will."

"And Jade?"

"Yes?"

"Good luck."


	5. Chapter Four

_Normal's Boring_

_Chapter Four_

Though not many people knew or cared, Hollywood Arts had a swim team. They sucked, with their current wins-to-loses roaster at 0-12, but regardless of how bad the team was, this meant that the school had to have their own swimming pool. It was indoors, in a wing of the school that not many students went to, making the entire branch of hallways near it reek of chlorine and bare feet. Tori Vega sat beside the edge of that very pool now, for one reason and one reason only.

"Cat!" She called. "I need to talk to you!" The redheaded mermaid suddenly surfaced from the water, her eyes shinning and the scales on her bright red tail doing the same.

"Tori!" She exclaimed, happy that someone had come to see her. "_Yay_!" When Cat flicked her beautiful, reflective tail, she inadvertently splashed Tori with enough water to soak her clothes and dampen her hair. They didn't have time for Tori to bring up whatever it was she wanted to talk about, because the two friends were interrupted by the school bell, signaling lunch.

"Need some help?" Tori asked, offering Cat her hand. The redhead nodded and Tori helped pull her up and out of the pool; Cat stood there, naked and dripping. "Let me get you a towel," her friend prompted, and headed her one of the swim team's towels, near where Cat and the other mermaids and mermen of the school had extra clothing and outfits stored away for them.

"Thanks," she said when Tori gave it to her, wrapping herself in the fuzzy, blue linen. "I'm sorry I splashed you…"

"It's okay, it was an accident. I can chance during lunch anyway. Now go get dressed! If we don't hurry up, Festus 'll be all out of spaghetti tacos!"

"Spaghetti tacos – _yum_!" Cat declared, and once she had finished dressing, sped out of the door and down to where the students ate lunch outside. Tori sighed, and started down to lunch herself. Maybe Cat wasn't the right person to talk to about this, anyway – she knew that all along. Cat would never judge her, or call her crazy. Cat was naïve, and childlike – she would only see the good in what Tori would tell her, not crazy, or the dangerous, or the just plain _bad_. Maybe Tori didn't want to see that, either…

That entire day, Jade felt sick to her stomach. Sitting next to Beck, poking at a salad while everyone else ate normally, she really just wanted to curl up into a ball of nothing.

"You should really try to eat something," Beck told her.

"Since when are _you_ my conscience?" Jade snapped.

"Just trying to help…" he added, mumbling under his breath.

Beck had known Jade since they were both around two years old. The two of them had grown up living near each other – Beck's house was right now the street from Jade's mother's house – and since they both would sometimes go out and venture into the dark forests at all hours of the night – for Jade, this was almost every night now, and for Beck, this was as a wolf under the light of the full moon – they became fast friends. They survived elementary school together, even though other kids used to be tease them and giggle about how 'Jade and Beck were dating'. But they weren't, they never would – for starters, it would just be too weird, and Beck was the only person who Jade had come out to. She trusted him more than anyone, and he was perfectly fine with it – she thought it was going to be a huge deal, as if telling him that she was going to blow up the world, but Beck simple nodded and said 'ok'. Jade trusted Beck with her life, but as of lately, he was acting more like a reprimanding conscience then was to Jade's liking.

"How to you stomach this stuff?" she spat to him. Beck snickered and responded:

"Well, it's easier when you've been eating human food your whole life, and not drinking blood like the mosquito you are."

"Mosquitos are _way _too annoying," Jade smiled for the first time that whole day. "I'd rather be a spider!"

"You…oh, that's just _wrong_!" Andre declared, hearing only the end of Beck and Jade's conversation, sitting down next to Beck with spaghetti tacos on his lunch tray.

"What's _wrong _is this slop Festus gives the unlucky ones who don't get to the front of the line," Robbie said as he sat, Rex on hand, with a glob of what seemed to be mystery meat on his purple tray. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his long, brown wand. Waving it three times, he charmed the disgusting, orange-tinted goo with a spoken incantation of a language that no one else at the table understood, and it become a fresh lobster before everyone's eyes.

"Aw, that's just not fair!" Rex jested.

"I'd share with you, Rex, if you hadn't been so blimey rude this morning."

"_Blimey_?" The puppet sneered. "Suddenly you're British?"

Even Jade had to laugh at that. She continued to probe an olive in her salad with her fork while still laughing a little, until Tori sat down next to her, with Cat in toe.

"There's really no point in eating what Festus is serving now," she groaned. "But Cat got us a bag of pretzels from the vending machine to share…"

"And, Tori, I told you!" Cat added. "I've got new candy in my bra!"

"I'll pass," Tori said to the redhead, trying to smile and not look as put off as she was. Jade felt increasingly sicker to her stomach, and she suddenly felt a migraine coming on.

"Tori, why's your hair wet?" Andre asked his best friend.

"And…didn't you have a different outfit on this morning?" Robbie added.

"Why don't you ask Cat?" The younger Vega sister responded, and Cat simply shrugged, and said:

"Oops."

Sometimes, Jade wished she were normal. She wished she didn't have to deal with all this stupid, unnecessary vampire stuff. She wondered what it would be like – not to have to kill all the time, not to be able to run impossibly fast or for impossibly long amounts of time. She wanted to know what it was like to be able to sleep through the night all of the time, and not to be awoken at some ungodly hour and feel the sudden need to go outside to run, jump, hunt, whatever. With another look at Tori Vega, Jade sighed. Maybe she was about to find out.


	6. Chapter Five

_Normal's Boring_

_Chapter Five_

Jade gripped the bar of her windowsill with one hand, and opened the window with the other. It was heavier than usual, she thought; as she needed to remove her grip and use to hands to pry it open. The wind was perfect now – not too much as to be annoying or in her way, but just enough to accelerate the adrenaline rush she always got when running at top speed through the forest, jumping from tree branch to tree branch, chasing the rustling leaves in the wind or the setting sun in the horizon…

"Jade!" Her mother called. "Come down for dinner!"

The surprise of her voice startled Jade just enough to cause her to loose her balance, and fall. She flipped over, and instead of being able to spring to a close enough tree branch, or simply flip back into her room, Jade was _falling_ – actually _falling_. This had never happened to her before – she'd never been anything but graceful, especially through the air when jumping long distances or flipping to propel herself to another point. As her legs dangled, with more than half of her body outside of her window now, threatening for her to fall to the ground, she managed to grab onto the spine of her windowsill again, and pull herself back up into her room safely. Jade sighed. Clearly, being human was not any fun so far.

She sat down at their small dinner table between her mother and brother, and sighed yet again at the plate full of food in front of her. Max was eating his cheeseburger as if he was starving, mouth-full after mouth-full, and hardly touched the greens on the side of his plate.

"Try it, Jade!" He prompted, taking another bite. She hesitated, but took a bite of her cheeseburger so small, that it really couldn't be called a _bite _at all. She pretended to like it for Max, but to Jade, she'd never tasted anything more terrible in her entire life. Max grinned at her faux-happiness, and went back to eating. _Typical Maxie_, Jade snickered, and smiled half-heartedly. Her thoughts were interrupted, however, but the ringing of Elizabeth West's cellphone.

"Hello?" Her mother asked into her phone, picking it up quickly when it suddenly rang. "Uh…yes. But I said I couldn't work the nightshift tonight, I – yes, yes I know about the staff cuts…yes. I'll be there as soon as I can." She hung up the phone, sighed as her daughter had, and faced her two children: "guys," she started. "I…I have to work the nightshift again at the hospital tonight. I'm so sorry, I – "

"It's fine, Mom," Jade assured her. "I'll take care of Max."

"Yeah!" Max declared, after swallowing a big bite of cheeseburger. "It'll be fun!"

"But…" she added, off the side, only to her daughter. "You'll be alright?"

"I'll be _fine_, really," she said. "I'm feeling better. I can call Beck and have him stay over too, if that makes you more comfortable."

"Well…alright," Elizabeth sighed one more time. "I hate having to do this to the two of you…"

"Mom, _go_. You don't want to be late," was Jade's only response to that. She locked the door behind her still upset mother, and grabbed her cellphone from the table.

"Beck?" she asked into it. "Can you come over tonight? It's just me and Max for the night, and he loves when you're there, and…and I need to talk to you." When she heard nothing from the werewolf, she added: "Beck? Are you there?" On the other end of the line, she could hear Beck panting like a dog.

"This…is not…a good…time!" He yowled through panted breaths.

"Oh, God, Beck – what's the phase of the moon tonight? Are you in heat again?"

Jade gave herself a facepalm and shook her head. Whenever the moon was furthest from full – in it's further most waxing crescent, or even on a new moon – Beck and any other werewolf would be in heat. This meant they, basically, acted as if they were intoxicated one minute, full of energy the next, out of breath and panting as Beck was a second later, and ready to jump on any girl within a hundred feet of them at any time.

"Cat's really pretty, isn't she?" Beck continued, suddenly dreamy.

"_Cat_?" Jade asked. "Since when do you like Cat?"

"She's _really pretty_, Jadelyn," he added. "And she sings really pretty, too…"

"_Don't_ call me _Jadelyn_!" She snapped back at him. "Look, do you want to come over for the night or not?"

"Sure! I'll be right there!" He was suddenly peppy again. "Oh, and Jadelyn – "

But she hung up the phone after again hearing the sound of her full name. Beck arrived shortly after, to Max's happiness.

"Beck!" He called, and the werewolf boy picked him up and swung him around while the seven-year-old said he would 'beat him up'. Jade loved seeing her best friend and baby brother together. It made her still, un-beating heart swell. Beck quickly infiltrated her kitchen, taking everything he could out of the refrigerator. Jade watched him in disgust as he ate like a machine. Now that she had a rough idea of what food tasted like, she figured she could never watch anyone eat ever again with a straight face.

"That's disgusting," she groaned, and pulled up a chair next to him at the table. Max had gone up to his room by now, so Jade thought this was her opportunity to talk to Beck. "Beck, I need to talk to you," she blurted. He giggled like a little schoolgirl, an intoxicated state suddenly taking over him. "And…you won't remember any of this anyway, will you?"

"I love you, Jadelyn," he said between giggles.

"Yeah, you won't remember any of this…" a wicked smile took hold of her face: now she could tell him anything she wanted, simply to get it off her chest, and he wouldn't ask about it later. She'd planned to tell him and talk to him about it, but _this _was even better.

"Beck," she started again. "I don't know how, or why, but I'm in love with Tori Vega…and I've never wanted anyone's blood more."

While Tori and Trina's parents slept, Tori was still on top of her bed, not sleeping, not even trying to sleep. She would close her eyes, then open them, then pace around her room, then go back to the same position she was in before, and repeat every so often. Something was nagging at her – some_one _was nagging at her – and she could not clear her head, no matter what or how hard she tried. Suddenly, Tori heard a loud clang from down the hall, and a small shriek from her sister. She got up to investigate, and once down the hall, opened her sister's bedroom down to reveal Trina, with the same fairy wand in her hand that she had that morning, with her chair and some school book tipped over and flung about the room.

"Tori!" Trina whisper-screamed. "It…it _works_!"

"What are you talking about?" Tori asked.

"It _works_!" her older sister repeated. "I…just…made it…_work_!"

"Oh, come _on_," Tori rolled her eyes. "How gullible do you think I am?"

"Tori I'm _not kidding_!" Trina yowled. "I was waving it and – " Tori snatched the wand out of her sister's hand, stopping her from finishing her sentence.

"Trina, I told you," she began, her hand waving about to prove to Trina that nothing would happen. "This is dangerous! Nothing is going to – "

" – _Tori_!" Her sister snapped. "_Look_!"

Tori saw Trina's tipped-over chair, now nearly touching the ceiling.


	7. Author's Note

_Normal's Boring_

_Author's Note_

Just so you all know, I definitely plan on continuing this story, I just haven't updated in a while, but I will. I'm working on a new, M-rated, Jori fic. I plan on this being a one-shot, therefore it will take much longer to write. It will be called _Tori In Wonderland_, based off of _Alice In Wonderland_, only sexy and Jori-filled. Tori is the Alice of the story, and Jade is The Mad Hatter. Since The Mad Hatter doesn't come into the story until the middle, I've started writing this story out of order. Here's the thing: if anyone wants a Jori-tastic preview of this new story, please let me know, and I will PM it to you.

Thank you for your continued support of _Normal's Boring_, and I promise to update again soon.


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